Something to Share

I've been thinking about posting this post for some time now and it's taken me a long time to get all of my thoughts together so, bear with me a little bit. :)

I want to share some things with the world about being over-weight/fat/fluffy/obese/thick, etc...

There are so many misconceptions that people have about those of us who are over-weight...."surely you're just lazy",  "of course you don't take care of yourself", "fat people smell bad", "you must have emotional problems and you eat to make yourself feel better", and my most recent favorite..."You're having weight loss surgery to take the easy way out".....Who comes up with this stuff??  Well, if you're overweight I'm sure at some point someone has said one of these things to you.

My entire life I've had these things said to me or about me when people thought I couldn't hear them. I remember my Dad telling me at 12 years old that I'd be so pretty if I lost weight. I'd spend the summers at the neighborhood pool as a child and there were kids there that would call me "butter ball", I remember in gym class being picked last for kick ball because I was overweight...kids were very cruel....

I've always felt like my weight defined who I was because from an early age I was very aware of it. The people around me made me aware that I was different. As I got older the criticism didn't stop. It wasn't the same as being called "butter ball" or "fatty" from other children....it came in the form of rejection from classmates in middle school...people not wanting to be my friend because I was big, guys not paying me any attention in high school and only being my friend to get closer to my prettier/skinny friends, my parents commenting each school year on how big my clothes had gotten. It has been a constant struggle throughout the years just to fit in...just to feel "normal".

As an adult I still struggle with it. There have been times where "friends" have said negative things to me, there have been men who thought they could treat me badly because I was a bigger girl and they thought that I'd just deal with it (obviously mistaken), I go out in public and it's almost as if people are looking through me and not at me....hard to explain that one but unless you've been there you may not quite understand.

I'm not sure what my purpose is with writing this post but I really felt like this is something I needed to get off my chest. People are so quick to judge someone because of how they look but don't take the time to think about how their actions and comments are going to effect that person in the long term. Society forms us all to believe that beautiful is a size 0 but really beauty is only skin deep! I am not perfect and I have many flaws but I am still a person and I have feelings. So, I ask that before you say something mean or negative about how another person looks that you think of me....after all, every one of you that is reading this is either a member of my family or my friend and how would you feel if it were being said about me?

I'm looking forward to surgery and loosing all of this extra weight and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't eager to finally feel like I fit in. I need to get my "pretty" back...I need to get back to where I feel like I belong.